The Starbucks, ASU, and Pearson Scam

If you thought wow! yesterday when Starbucks announced that CoffeeCorp will fund its employees' college educations from here on out, look a little closer before you fill up your mug.  

First off, Arizona State has joined the state-run exploitation college model perfected by the University of Maryland, whereby overseas military personnel and the stateside poor pay for junk degrees while funding lavish campus health clubs and libraries that only the on-campus college crowd can take advantage of.  UMaryland's profits were $350 million annually in 2012.  

ASU hopes to be raking in $200 million a year by 2020 to make party central even more fun the youngsters who can afford to go there.  And who is managing ASU's online biz?  Who else--Pearson.  Alway Earning!

With the help of Starbucks public relations gimmick, ASU may reach its goal sooner than 2020. From MSNBC on Starbucks "free college education":

. . . Sounds great, right? Not according to Sara Goldrick-Rab, professor of educational policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who said she found it “incredibly problematic” that Starbucks has decided to limit its tuition assistance to a single online university.

“ASU Online is a profit venture,” said Goldrick-Rab. “And basically, these two businesses have gotten together and created a monopoly on college ventures for Starbucks employees.”

Although ASU is a public university, its online wing is definitely a revenue-generating enterprise, helping the university manage its finances in an era of declining state aid. Online courses are taught by ASU professors, but much of the technical and administrative work that goes into managing ASU Online has been handed over to a private company, Pearson.

In addition to limiting student choices, Goldrick-Rab said she believes it will leave them with a shoddier education. Recent research [follow the link] has suggested that online-only classes may leave low-income students at a disadvantage. Those are precisely the people, said Goldrick-Rab, who are mostly likely to enroll in ASU Online through the Starbucks program.

“These studies indicate that online education not only doesn’t work well for them, but can also propel them backwards,” she said. Students would also expected to become full-time students, while still working an average 20 hours per week at Starbucks. . . .

Duncan Caves to the Billionaires of the For-Profit Exploitation Colleges

From TICAS:

Statement on Final Gainful Employment Rule 

Pauline Abernathy, Vice President, The Institute for College Access & Success

Background:  Today the U.S. Department of Education issued a final “gainful employment” rule to enable enforcement of the federal law requiring any post-secondary career education program receiving federal financial aid to “prepare students for gainful employment in a recognized occupation.”  The final regulation applies to all career education programs, whether offered by a public, non-profit or for-profit college.

“The final gainful employment rule is a first step towards preventing federal taxpayer dollars from being wasted on career education programs that leave students with nothing but insurmountable debt. Unfortunately the final rule will allow many programs that over-charge and under-deliver to continue to receive federal student aid. It also fails to address the recommendations of a broad coalition of student, civil rights, consumer, higher education and college access organizations to strengthen the modest draft rule published last July. While the final rule is a step in the right direction, it is substantially weaker than the draft rule and it will take longer to protect students and taxpayers from the worst of the worst programs. 

“Since the draft gainful employment rule was issued, evidence of rampant fraud and abuse in the for-profit career college industry has continued to mount: 11 state attorneys general have launched a joint investigation of the industry; the Justice Department and state attorneys general joined a whistleblower lawsuit against one of the largest publicly traded career college corporations; a Government Accountability Office undercover investigation found 15 out of 15 career colleges engaged in deceptive and misleading practices; and a Senate committee investigation has uncovered company documents encouraging unseemly, high-pressure recruiting tactics.  

“This year alone, taxpayers are expected to underwrite more than $30 billion in federal loans and more than $9 billion in Pell Grants to students attending for-profit career colleges.  However, the evidence is clear that many of these programs are fleecing both taxpayers and students.  The industry enrolls about one in ten college students, but it accounts for one in four federal loan and grant dollars and for nearly half of all defaults on federal student loans. 

“More needs to be done to prevent the waste of taxpayer dollars and protect students, including veterans, from programs that swindle them rather than prepare them to succeed in the workforce.”

An independent, nonprofit organization, the Institute for College Access & Success works to make higher education more available and affordable for people of all backgrounds. For more about our programs and initiatives, including the Project on Student Debt, see http://ticas.org. For more information about support for a strong gainful employment rule, see www.ProtectStudentsandTaxpayers.org.